On 30 September 2025, The Rights Practice signed a joint letter, along with 52 other rights groups, addressed to Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to urgently raise serious concerns regarding the systemic abuses occurring inside Hong Kong’s prisons. These abuses are detailed in the recent report by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation, “We Were Made to Suffer: Systemic Abuse and Political Control Inside Hong Kong’s Prisons” (September 2025). 

The report documents harrowing violations such as prolonged and punitive solitary confinement far beyond internationally accepted limits; arbitrary and excessive use of solitary confinement and isolation to punish political prisoners; systemic physical, sexual, and psychological abuse tolerated by prison officials; chronic medical neglect resulting in severe deterioration and preventable deaths; widespread degradation of prison infrastructure and hygiene; and weaponisation of psychiatric detention against dissidents. 

These conditions blatantly violate Hong Kong’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention Against Torture, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (“Mandela Rules”), and other binding international standards. They also constitute cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and in many cases amount to torture.

We urge the High Commissioner to strengthen the UN Human Rights Office's monitoring of the human rights situation in Hong Kong and issue an independent report with findings and recommendations on Hong Kong prisons. We also include additional recommendations for the High Commissioner as well as to all UN Member States. 

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